El Paso -- In reaction to today's announcement by President Obama on immigration, Texas state Senator José Rodríguez, Chairman of the Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus, issued the following statement:
"I applaud President Obama's executive order to put a halt on deportations to some of the millions of undocumented immigrants working and living in the United States. The country can no longer sit idly by as Congress continues to fail to pass comprehensive immigration reform and allows families to be torn apart by a broken immigration system.
"The executive order issued by the Obama administration, similar to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a crucial first step to achieving needed immigration reform that will allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, allow law enforcement to focus on criminals instead of immigrant workers, and create safer communities and a more secure border, as undocumented immigrants will no longer need to fear reporting crimes.
"Texas and the border communities that I represent will be better served by having undocumented immigrants more willing to communicate with law enforcement, able to access driver's licenses, and stronger ties to their community. Throwing money at unwarranted 'border surges' and other top-down, knee-jerk responses, which do little to make us safer and actually harm our economy, is bad policy.
"I encourage Congress to enact permanent changes to our broken immigration system that serve the border communities and end the politics of fear that has dominated this debate for so long. "